Portland couple's vision: 141 Eyewear, a business to help the less fortunate

View full size141eyewear.com141 Eyewear's "Morrison" framesPortlanders Kyle Yamaguchi and Shu-Chu Wu had a few common items on their to-do lists.

They dreamed of starting their own businesses. They wanted to help less fortunate people around the world. They wanted to do work they loved. Kyle wanted to find a hobby.

Both young people moved to Portland in the last decade; they met in the Pearl District, where Kyle lived and Shu-Chu (pronounced Sue-chee) worked. Kyle's a designer at Nike. She's an optician at The Eye Studio.

Last spring, their dreams came together in a concept for a brand-new business, a business unlike any they've heard of.

"We had this idea that we would start an eyewear company," Kyle says, "and for every pair of glasses we sold we'd give a pair away."

Lots of companies give money or products to charity. But from the moment Kyle and Shu-Chu conceived of their company, helping others was as important to their business plan as making a profit.

"The whole notion that you buy one, we give one, is ingrained in our company DNA," Kyle says. "It's the foundation of what we are doing."

Kyle and Shu-Chu thought about creating a nonprofit organization but decided against it. "We're trying to create a more sustainable model," Kyle says.

And soliciting donations in an economic crisis, Shu-Chu says, is just not sustainable. "People can't donate because they're having their own hard time."

So the pair decided they would design high-quality frames for glasses, have them manufactured and then sell them in the U.S.

Then they'll take a lower profit margin, making less money, by paying for a free pair of glasses for a person who can't afford one for each pair they do sell.

Last summer, Kyle and Shu-Chu began designing the frames. It was a perfect blend of their experience and ability. Shu-Chu once considered becoming a nurse and has taken fashion design classes. Kyle has developed production lines for Pampers diapers and today creates the strategy for Nike's shoes for the NBA: "I work with colors, materials and the players themselves to create their logos."

Kyle and Shu-Chu came up with 10 designs they think will appeal to people ages 25 to 80 all over the world. "We didn't want to create anything too weird, too fashion-forward or too designed," Kyle says. "We wanted designs that could survive trends and continue to sell even in an economy like this."

When it came time to pick product names, the couple first thought they'd use the names of their friends and family members. "Then we thought, no, because if people didn't get named, we didn't want feelings hurt," Shu-Chu says.

Instead, they've named the designs for streets and bridges in Portland, based on aspects of their relationship, Kyle says. "We live off Lovejoy. We like a sushi restaurant in Sellwood ... We like hanging out on Hawthorne."

To kick off the start of their new company, two weeks ago Kyle and Shu-Chu used their own funds to conduct a free eyecare clinic in Jiasian, Taiwan, a small town hit hard by Typhoon Morakot last August.

They held the two-day clinic at a junior high school, in cooperation with an optometry professor from a Taiwanese university. 141 Eyewear provided lenses and frames for more than 200 pairs of glasses.

"We were able to provide these kids with a new pair of glasses that helped them see perfectly," Shu-Chu says.

She'll never forget the first boy who received his glasses. "He kept repeating, 'Wow. Wow. Wow.' He was very happy. So was I."

141 Eyewear frames are on sale in Portland, at The Eye Studio in the Pearl.

"We're targeting a wider release for early summer," Kyle says. "We'll try to get them placed up and down I-5 and across the U.S."

At year's end, they will tally how many frames they sold in 2010 and hold another clinic or two to give away free glasses. At least one clinic will be in Portland.

"Portland has been very good to us," Kyle says.

Both he and Shu-Chu wear 141 Eyewear frames every day. You, too, could sport Burnside, Broadway, Morrison, Kearney or Davis.